Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work from miniature painters from around the world. While participants come from every colour, gender, age and nationality, they have at least three things in common: they love miniatures, enjoy a supportive community and they have all taken the Challenge.
This site features the current year's event along with the archives of past Challenges.
Enjoy your visit and remember to come back soon.

These figures have been sitting around here for a while since the Spectre Kickstarter ended sometime last year and the figures arrived. I had been holding off painting them until this challenge rolled around, and until I could come up with some cool looking African / Middle eastern buildings to use them with.

Spectre Miniatures is a small company that focuses on modern 28mm figures and did a few Kickstarters in the last little while. Since then they have also expanded their ranges significantly and have a whole pile of ultra modern miniatures for use. The detail on the figures is extremely good and the figure quality is very high. If I had one complaint about them, it would be in their attempt for detail and accuracy they have kept the guns the proper scale. While fine in theory, in practice it makes them look really small as well as very fragile. I did have a few show up broken though, and they were quickly replaced, so hurrah for customer service!

20 varied 28mm Spectre modern African militia

Anyway, I have done 20 of the African Militants / Militia up so far with more African and Middle East militia to follow shortly.

Since most modern games that these are involved with will have a huge number of militia vs a very small number of professional or elite soldiers, I chose to do these as a very fast and basic table top level. I will spend more time on the 4-6 elites that face off against the 30-50 militia, but just couldn't justify a ton of time on all the cannon fodder.

All I did for painting them was prime black, base layer all the colours, wash with a dirty brown/black wash, and then highlight. I then went in and did a few small details like the NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) shirt which I thought appropriate, some shiny white / bright colour hightop runners, and bright coloured flip flops and Croc's since that is obviously the proper footwear to enter battle with. To finish off the crew I painted the leader of the militia in a purple suit with matching purple hair, as it seemed a very militant thing to fly in the face of all fashion sense.

I love the different poses, clothing, expressions that Spectre put on all of these figs, it made them a blast to paint.

For all of these and my upcoming professional soldiers I also designed and laser cut a pile of Middle East inspired buildings. I kept them fairly generic so that they could be used for the Middle East, Spain, or even Mexico, so that they could see multiple uses. For anyone interested I have them up on my site at: www.sg2creations.com in the Middle East Buildings section.

20 militia should net me 100 points for my total and towards the Modern challenge that I am in.

Very nice Byron, you can almost hear the chants as they work themselves into a frenzy. Great mix of colours to give variety. Now will they be backed some "technicals"? I have not seen this range before they are tempting... must resist,,

After three weeks of German
Gray its nice to paint some blue. My offering this week is three 10
man units of French Chasseur. I am planning on running a small game
based on the fighting at Verdun around Bois de Caures. The excellent
gaming blog Scrivsland has several after action reports that have provided inspiration.

All
of the figures are from Old Glory. While they are a little rough with
some blocky looks and odd castings, once I got started they painted quickly.

30-28mm figures 150points.

Aaah more "Horizon Bleu" loveliness for the brave defenders of la France!- I really like the guys in masks - suitably menacing. I have often found that with Old Glory figures that look are a bit oddly sculpted and cast , they frequently have real life once painted.

So, the Holidays are done, no more company in my house, my internet is working -- this weekend was quite productive!

I decided to dive into the core of what I want to accomplish through this challenge and went with 36 28mm unarmored Vikings to complement a similar number of armored ones I painted in December. The intent is to use them for Saga once I get a band of Saxons painted up. That work will be delayed slightly due to an Irish whisky tasting at the local pub tonight (can't be painting after that!).

The majority (32) of these Vikings are by Wargames Factory. I loved, loved, loved their armored Vikings. However, I was a little disappointed with these ones. The detail on the front side of the figures was pretty soft. As the backs were fine, I'm guessing maybe it was a bad batch. Whatever - just wish the sides were reversed! I think they painted up fine, in any case. Here's the group shot:

I did a dozen as archers, which had the added advantage of reducing the number o shields I had to paint. Also, I tried out decals for the first time, ordered from the UK. Ironically, the Viking decals were too large for these guys but the Saxon ones I got worked fine (the reverse is also true, so some of my upcoming Saxons will have Viking decals!). Not a big deal, given the similarities between the two groups. I also handpainted about half of the shields, just because I like doing it and need the practice. Here are some, a mix of decaled and handpainted. The gold dragon one turned out ok -- must have got it from Wessex.

Some spearmen from reverse:

They look rather angry, as Vikings should:

A random archer up close:

The last 4 are Berserkers, metal figures from Gripping Beast. I wanted a set for Saga and these were perfect and scaled nicely with the larger group. As befits Berserkers, they all wear skins and have a mess of weapons. One is actually wearing shoes. I assume he is the boss.

You have to respect the pudgy guy on the right -- he is so excited to fight he wore an adult diaper so he didn't have to take a break during the battle!

All in all a fun weekend of painting. As I mentioned, next up are the poor Saxons who have to deal with these chaps, 32 armored and 32 unarmored figures, also from Wargames Factory.

Great to see projects moving on as part of the Challenge - the group shot looks the biz , with a horde of angry Vikings - pretty sure I would not be staying around. I have given you a bonus for the hand painted shields - as for the guy with diaper I will let you tell him....and enjoy your Irish Whiskey tasting - " Sláinte! "

Ok.. so was a bit quiet as I am working on something else at the moment... a side side project to things in the works ;) So have slowed down the batch painting.. slightly..

That being said, here are a few takings from the bench currently..

First up is 28 Raging Heroes painted up in a Catachan scheme.. done up for a friend of mine that I have painted many of these in the past ( and have some more to do as well soon ).

Some of the batch painting photos from working on them.. though am switching over to beer bottle caps as model holders as I seem to have collected quite the few of them since purchasing a beer fridge last fathers day ;)

Then I had a few characters that I decided might be worth painting up last weekend as well. First up is a slanneshi daemon princess maybe? All I was asked if I could paint it up in Slanneshi purple colors..

Then we have a Valhallian Female commander.. again color scheme was pre-determined.. but it was quite a lot of fun to paint up..

Then we have 2 commissar females also from Raging Heroes.. really starting to like these models as they are full of character here..

And last up are 3 more vehicles from bolt action..

I painted them up without markings, but weathered them up with some modelmates liquid pigments.. need to go back over the rest of the american vehicles to do the same.. it really does add something to the finished product. But without the markings they can be used for either the Japanese or Americans now..

On the bench are more vehicles as I redo the Japanese tanks here.. as well as work on my epic fail entry... so many projects... so little time...

So a great mixed entry from Kyle. Really like your slanneshi daemon princess- its a great colour and nicely rendered, - and from that to the trucks - what a hobby!* EDIT todays minion can't count... points total amended upward from 190 to 205

Now that I have completed 1 side challenge and whilst I sit nervously and wait for MichaelA to catch up (hopefully he will be side tracked with some more wonderful vignettes), I have started on my next challenge - Bronze to Steel.

First up is a 16 strong Republican Roman Hastaii unit in bronze pectoral armour

I think these are Crusader Miniatures and I started this army towards the end of the last challenge. The shields are hand painted and are copied from a Little Big Man Studios design. I think they have come out alright

Next up are a 10 strong unit of Roman Cavalry, again with hand painted shields.

The shield design is an octopus on a blue background and is more likely to be a Greek design but I appear to be able to paint octopuses (I was gutted when I found out the plural was not octopi - me and a friend have a weird side line in finding Latin "i" plurals on signs).
Not sure if these work well as overall the blue plumes and shields don't make them look very Roman

Finally they need somebody to fight so here are 22 Numidian Skirmishers

These are Victrix plastics are are beautiful, dynamic figures

These last 7 are Wargames Factory and are neither beautiful nor dynamic. I thought about giving them bucklers but they are offensive weapons for punching somebody in the face with and that doesn't seem appropriate. I may go back and give them proper shields.

Ooh wow ..here he goes again. Wonderfully consistent work on the shields Martin.I actually really like the blue and the octopi! - Given the effort involved in the shields i am going to round this to 310. Huzzah!

Thanks Tamsin for keeping on top of the roudy rebels. It comes around so quickly you know, and this is still only early in the challenge marathon . Well if you have been Waiting for Wednesday - a little musical accompanyment from the in-flight entertainment courtesy of Lisa Loeb might just help you welcome the day in.

Right - its time to stand in line for you medication..nursey will see you now...